DR. SLADE AND HIS SPIRIT SLATES
SLATE writing was an especially fortunate “find” for mediums. Its results were obtained in full light and the whole thing seemed so simple and direct that apparently there was nothing to investigate and comparatively speaking there were no blank seances. Such success led to carelessness and exposures followed, so numerous and complete that it is quite unnecessary to list them all here.68 Every once in a while though some medium still takes a chance when opportunity offers and gives a test to especially gullible sitters, but to-day no medium with any pretentions to “class” would think of anything so “common” as slate writing in its old form. Spirit slates are now listed in the catalogues of houses dealing in conjuring apparatus and the fraud mediums who formerly made use of them are employing the safer and easier swindles of automatic writing, trance or trumpet messages, and the “ouija board.”
The infinite grafting possibilities of the Spirit slates seem to have been overlooked until adopted and put into usable form by Dr. Henry Slade,69 a man who had acquired an unenviable reputation in New York City, but it is extremely doubtful if the present generation would have known anything about Dr. Slade had the perpetuation of his name been left to the quality of his mediumship, for he was only one of a large number of conjuring fakirs who bamboozled the credulous of his day. However, he was brought into the limelight on two notable occasions: first by being exposed and criminally prosecuted in London; and second when poor old Professor Zollner, a noted German astronomer and physicist, “fell” for his simple conjuring and fell so hard that he made Slade the hero of his great (?) work, “Transcendental Physics.”
Like D. D. Home, and many others, after making a reputation in America, Slade jumped over to London, for England’s arms seem ever open for the reception of mediums who have made good here and if a medium escapes the toils of American investigators he has little to fear from willing believers on the other side of the Atlantic, though as a matter of fact several were sent to jail there. Slade reached England in July, 1876, and began to hold sittings at once, and was soon “cleaning up” in fine shape. The late John Nevil Maskelyne, the great English magician, told me that:
“Crowds of people rushed to witness the phenomena (?) paying one guinea each for a sitting lasting but a few minutes. You would think they were giving gold guineas away. The ‘Doctor’ must have netted some hundreds of pounds weekly which in those days was rated a high sum of money for an individual ‘performer.’”
Then, just as things were going so nicely for Slade there came a sudden crash, for which two men were responsible; Professor Ray Lankester (now Sir Ray Lankester) and Dr. Horatio Donkin (now Sir Horatio Donkin). These men applied certain effective methods of scrutiny to Slade’s exhibitions which resulted in his arrest. The trial created a big sensation, not only in Spiritual circles, but throughout the civilized world, and the Bow Street Court was the most popular show in London for several days; the “top-liner” being J. N. Maskelyne, the magician, who performed all of Slade’s tricks in the witness box.
Slade was convicted and sentenced to three months at hard labor. An appeal was taken and the decision quashed on account of a flaw in the indictment. While Sir Lankester was procuring new summonses for Slade and his manager, Simmons, they both skipped across the channel into France, thus closing the doors of England against Slade for all time as he never dared to set foot on her unfriendly shores again. He made ready for a Paris performance but a friend of Sir Lankester’s sent an account of the court proceedings to the Paris press so the French people had the whole story before Slade was able to begin.
While touring Europe in 1920 I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Ray Lankester and hearing from him an account of Dr. Slade’s undoing. Both he and Donkin were physicians. They had been laying their plans to expose two other mediums, Herne and Williams, but Slade’s unexpected arrival in London changed these plans and instead they plotted the seance which proved to be Slade’s downfall. Donkin was away from London at the time but Sir Lankester wired him and while waiting for his return attended one of Slade’s seances. He pretended to Slade that he came to see if the Spirits would write a message on the slates if he held them himself. Slade assured him that they would and arrangements were made for a second sitting. Before Sir Lankester left Slade asked him if he had been in communication with any departed relatives.
“No, but I have an Uncle John,” Sir Lankester replied.
Consequently at the second sitting the following message was received:
“I am glad to see you here again.—John.”
“But have you an Uncle John?” I asked.
“No, Houdini,” he replied smiling, “that is why everyone laughed in the courtroom at the time of the trial. You see, Slade thought I was a firm believer, and I allowed him to distract my attention. He said to me ‘You have a great deal of mediumistic power about you. I see them over you behind your head.’”
As he said this Sir Lankester raised his head with seeming credulity acting the part splendidly.
“What made you suspect Slade?” I asked him.
“At the first seance I noticed the tendons move on Slade’s wrist as he held his hand outstretched under the table,” Sir Lankester replied, “and while making a number of suspicious moves he scratched the slates a number of times with his finger nail to simulate the noise made by a slate pencil when writing on a slate.”
On the return of Sir Donkin it was arranged that he and Sir Lankester should attend a seance together and that Sir Donkin was to watch for the “suspicious move” and when he saw it signal Sir Lankester. Everything worked as planned. On receiving the agreed signal from Donkin, Lankester seized the slate containing the finished message proving that a skillful exchange of slates had been made by Slade and this was the real evidence which caused the downfall of Henry Slade in England.
Blocked in Paris from working his tricks because of the publication of an account of his exposure in England Slade seems to have gone to Germany for it was during the next year, 1877, that he so successfully deluded Professor Zollner. “Zollner” is one of the names on which Spiritualistic enthusiasts bank most heavily for proof of their claims. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to this day quotes Zollner as indisputable authority. Nevertheless Zollner is discredited by Mr. George S. Fullerton, Secretary of the Seybert Commission. While in Germany Mr. Fullerton made a special business of investigating the value of this Zollner endorsement, and at the time all of the men who participated in the Slade investigation were alive with the exception of Zollner himself. Mr. Fullerton in the summary of his report to the Commission said:
“Thus it would appear that of the four eminent men whose names have made famous the investigation, there is reason to believe one, Zollner, was of unsound mind at the time, and anxious for experimental verification of an already accepted hypothesis; another, Fechner, was partially blind and believed because of Zollner’s observation; a third, Scheibner, was also afflicted with defective vision and not entirely satisfied in his own mind with the phenomena; and a fourth, Weber, was advanced in age, and did not even recognize the disabilities of his associates. None of the men named had any previous experience or knowledge of the possibilities of deception.”
The Seybert Commission, in 1884, seems to have made the first systematic, organized effort to fathom the so-called phenomena of Spiritualism, and this Commission sent for Slade, who was then operating in New York, and had him give a number of seances under their observation, but in spite of the fact that Slade gave the Commission a personal letter thanking them for their courtesies and expressing his willingness to sit with them again, the Commission considered his work fraudulent throughout.
At a very early stage of the sittings, the Commission noticed two kinds of communications. Those in answer to questions were slovenly written, often illegible, while those which came as voluntary contributions from the Spirits, were more carefully written, even to punctuation. It was very evident that this writing on the slates had been prepared previous to the sitting, while that written under the restraint of observation was the crude scrawl, abrupt in composition, and often almost or quite illegible. It was evident that where the nicely written communications were used an exchange of slates had been effected, whereas the other writing was the result of such skill as could be brought to bear without detection under the unfavorable conditions. It was also noticed that all of the long messages most suspiciously resembled the handwriting of the medium. Every test to which Slade submitted proved to be transparent to the Commission and some of his efforts to mystify it were referred to as:
“Several little tricks which he imputed to Spiritual agency, but which were almost puerile in the simplicity of their legerdemain, and which have been repeated with perfect success by one of our number.”
After all the slate-writing mediums who came in answer to an advertisement broadcasted by the Seybert Commission had been examined by it, the acting Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Horace Howard Furness, invited the late Harry Kellar to exhibit his slate-writing skill before it, not with any claim to supernatural phenomena but as a magician openly admitting his purpose to baffle by purely natural means. Mr. Kellar submitted to a series of tests far more complicated and difficult of execution than any produced by Slade or any other medium; nevertheless the Commission was unable to detect his methods and admitted itself completely baffled.
Mr. Kellar told me that when Mr. Furness, and Coleman Sellers, another member of the Commission who was himself an amateur entertainer, applied to him for an exhibition of his skill as a slate-writer they expected him to do the stock tricks of Slade. But someone tipped Kellar off that Sellers had told the members of the Commission what Kellar was to do and his probable method of doing it and for them to watch out for his modus operandi. So, not to be “caught napping,” Kellar, like the skillful mystifier that he was, determined to out-do Slade and beat Sellers. As he told me about it he laughed heartily, saying:
“If you could have seen Mr. Sellers’ face at the time of the unfolding of the mystery, it would have done your heart good.”
When Kellar arrived for the demonstration he insisted that the Commission furnish its own slates, so a boy was sent out who brought back about a dozen of various kinds. Then all sat down around the table with hands resting, palm down, on its top. The Commission opened the sitting by writing questions on the slates. Kellar held them under the table with the thumb on top and when he withdrew them in a few moments they had answers to the questions written in a clear round hand. The questions gradually became longer and longer, but the replies kept pace with them, sometimes covering a whole side of the slate. Although the slates were all different and could not possibly be mistaken for one another, the Commission began to put identifying marks on them. Once no pencil was put on the top of the slate but the reply came just the same. This fact was commented upon and Kellar replied:
“Oh, my Spirits can write without pencils,” a statement which puzzled the members of the Commission all the more.
Finally the magician asked them to write a question on a slate and cover it with another, placing the pencil between the two. Even this did not bother the “Spirits,” for when the slates were returned, both sides were found covered with writing.
The following extract from the Preliminary Report of the Seybert Commission, originally published in 1887, describes this performance of Harry Kellar before members of the Commission and shows the impression which it made on them.
“An eminent professional juggler performed, in the presence of three of our Commission, some independent slate-writing far more remarkable than any of which we have witnessed with mediums. In broad daylight, a slate perfectly clean on both sides, was, with a small fragment of slate pencil, held under a leaf of a small, ordinary table, around which we were seated; the fingers of the juggler’s hand pressed the slate tight against the underside of the leaf, while the thumb completed the pressure and remained in full view clasping the leaf of the table. Our eyes never for the fraction of a second lost sight of that thumb; it never moved; and yet in a few minutes the slate was produced, covered with writing. Messages were there, and still are there, for we preserved the slate, written in French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Gujorati, and ending with ‘ich bin ein Geist, und lieb, mein Lagerbier.’ For one of our number the juggler subsequently repeated the trick and revealed its every detail.”
The method which Kellar used, and which he described to me, was this. With the consent of the owner of the hotel, whom he agreed to pay for any damage, he had a small trap made in the floor of the room, about as large as a hot air register, with the necessary means of opening and closing it. A plush rug with rectangular designs was placed over this trap, and one of the designs, which was just the size of the trap, was cut out with a razor, these cuts being imperceptible. The piece of rug was glued firmly to the top of the trap. In addition to these preparations, Kellar bought a specimen of every variety of slate to be found in the downtown section of Philadelphia.
When the time for the “seance” arrived, Barney, Kellar’s clever young assistant, was seated on a platform in the room underneath the trap with the assortment of slates by his side. As soon as the Commission was seated around the table he opened the trap and could then hear all that was said in the room above. When the exhibition commenced he simply took the slate Kellar put under the table leaf, selected one from his assortment to match it, wrote on it the answer, and then slipped it under Kellar’s fingers. In the case of a marked slate he used that instead of a duplicate. Of course it was perfectly easy for Kellar to do his part without removing his thumb from the top of the table.
“A fake, pure and simple, you will say,” Kellar remarked to me, and then added, “but that’s what all Spiritualistic manifestations are.”
In point of time John W. Truesdell was probably the first exposer of Slade as he investigated him as early as 1872, but the results of his investigation were not made public until he published his book, “Bottom Facts,” in 1883. In this book he tells of setting a trap for Slade and proving that he substituted slates.
As Sam Johnson of Rome, N. Y., Truesdell arranged for a seance with Slade. Knowing that his overcoat would be searched, he left it hanging on the hall rack with an unsealed letter in the pocket and while waiting in the Spirit room he made the most of his opportunity to look around. Under the sideboard he found a slate with a message written on the lower side which read:
“We are happy to meet you in this atmosphere of Spirit research. You are now summoned by many anxious friends in the Spirit life, who desire to communicate with you, but who cannot until they learn more of the laws which govern their actions. If you will come here often, your Spirit friends will soon be able to identify themselves and to communicate with you as on earth life.
“Allie.”
In a bold hand Truesdell added:
“Henry, look out for this fellow. He is up to snuff.
“Alcinda.”
This was the name of Slade’s deceased wife, a fact which Truesdell happened to know. He replaced the slate as he had found it. Slade presently appeared and the seance began with the general phenomena of moving chairs, etc., preceding the slate-writing. When the name “Mary Johnson” appeared plainly written on the slate Slade said it was Truesdell’s sister. Upon being told that this was incorrect, Slade, pretending to change the light, drew the table over by the sideboard. As usual he lost control of the slate, letting it fall to the floor, and as he stooped over to pick it up took the prepared one instead. When he read the two messages he became livid with rage and turning to Truesdell demanded to know what it meant and who had been meddling with the slate.
“Spirits,” was Truesdell’s reply.
There were a few tense seconds and then the seance continued serenely.
I was too young in Slade’s time to seek an audience with him but I have the good fortune to know Mr. Frederick E. Powell, a prominent magician and a member of the Society of American Magicians. He is one of the very few persons now living who had seances with Slade and with his permission I quote the following description of his experiences with Slade.
“In the Autumn of 1881 or 82, Henry Slade, the famous Spirit medium, came to Philadelphia and took quarters at the Colonade Hotel, where he opened a room, in which to hold seances. At that time I was instructor of Mathematics in the Pennsylvania Military College at Chester, Pa. Reading the announcement of Slade’s seances in a Philadelphia paper, I wrote to him, and made an appointment for myself and Capt. R. K. Carter, to be present at one of them. Capt. Carter was at that time our instructor in Civil Engineering. Reaching the Colonade at the appointed time, we were ushered into Slade’s presence, in a room, bare of furniture, save a rather long table and several chairs, placed in the center of the room, while at the side and just back of where Slade was to sit, was a smaller table on which were piled a number of ordinary looking school slates, of various sizes. The center table had no cloth on it. Several small articles were on the mantelpiece, such as a smoker might use, viz.: a match box, etc.
“According to my recollection, Slade was rather tall and slim, and of an ingratiating presence. He was expecting us and at once placed me at a long table.
“The seance began, with Slade holding two slates of rather large size, and showing all their surfaces devoid of writing, placed them on the top of the table, and while rubbing their surfaces kept up a running fire of conversation. He then told us to place our hands on the table as near the center as possible with our little fingers touching. Slade placed the slates together, and after a moment or two separated them, saying he had forgotten to put a piece of pencil between. This he did, and holding them together placed them under the table with one hand, while he placed the other on the table so that his fingers touched our hands. This position was held for several minutes, when he said he would see if he had gotten any results. Bringing the slates from under the table he laid them on top and after a moment told Capt. Carter to look at them. Following this direction, Capt. Carter separated them, when one was found to have its entire surface covered with writing. This message, according to Slade, came from a man who had just died. (Notice of the man’s death had been published in the morning paper.) The message was signed with the full name, but as neither Capt. Carter nor I knew the man, we could not affirm or deny the correctness of the handwriting, nor the truth of the signature.
“Capt. Carter asked Slade if he might copy the message, but Slade demurred, saying he did not know if the Spirits would like the message copied. I found it difficult to account for the reticence of the Spirit or Spirits since the message had been written for our information. Its purport was, as far as I can recall, that everything was very glorious in the Spirit World, and that he, the writer, was very happy. There was nothing in the message that was above the mentality of Slade or that was, in any sense, descriptive of Spirit Life. All was vague and unsatisfactory, where real information was desired.
“During this demonstration and indeed throughout the entire seance, Slade sat sidewise to the table, his left hand resting generally on its top and his right hand free. Several short messages were next produced on a small slate held by Slade, under the table, and out of sight, a short piece of slate pencil always being placed on the upper surface of the slate. Two points were made very emphatic by Slade. First, that the piece of pencil was always found just at the end of the last word of the message, and second, that the messages were found on the upper side of the slate, which according to Slade was held close against the under surface of the table top. However, as we could not see the slate when placed under the table, since we were reaching as far as we could to get our hands on the center of its top, and the slate was only shown to us when being brought from under its surface, it would have been an easy thing to lower the slate after placing it under the table and writing with a single finger of Slade’s right hand, then bringing the slate to the under surface of the table, bring it slowly into sight.
“Once when the small slate was laid on top of the table the sound of writing was distinctly heard. During this time Slade had both hands on the upper surface of the table and in full sight. This was quite startling at the time, but later I discovered how to produce this sound of writing myself and without the aid of Spirits.
“Once, while we were having our attention directed to a slate held by Slade, the unoccupied chair on the side opposite to Slade and almost at the side of Capt. Carter, suddenly rose so that its seat struck the under side of the table, and then fell back with quite a thud.
“Another telling effect was carried out, when Slade gave me one of the small slates telling me to hold it under the table. I did so and felt it suddenly snatched from my hand (I was holding it with one hand, my other hand was on the top of the table) and carried with a scraping noise to the very end of the table and there it rose above the surface enough to disclose about a third or possibly a half its length. Then it was carried swiftly back and put in my hand.
“This concluded the first seance; when Slade, after a moment, said he thought that was all he could get at the time.
“On our second visit I need recount but three effects: First, difference in the method of obtaining writing on the large slates which began the seance, as in the first visit. Slade showed one slate and cleaned it thoroughly, then while keeping up a running fire of conversation, he casually reached to the small table, spoken of as having several piles of slates on it, and taking one as though at hazard, placed it flat on the big table. Rubbed its upper surface with his fingers, and placed a piece of pencil on it, held it under the table. After a pause he brought it out and taking the upper slate off the under, showed both surfaces without writing. He remarked that perhaps a different piece of pencil would be better and he placed another pencil on the upper surface of the top slate and then placed the lower slate over it, without at any time having shown its under surface. This surface was found covered with writing, the purport of which I do not now recall.
“The second variation of the first seance was when Slade asked me if I had ever seen the ‘dematerialization of a solid object?’ I said I had not, whereupon Slade took a small slate and, looking around as though to find a proper object for his test, picked up a match box from the mantelpiece, and put it on the upper surface of the slate rather close to where he would hold it. He then placed the slate and its superimposed object carefully under the table and after a moment brought out the slate, without the match box. I looked under the table but found nothing suspicious there.
“In a moment Slade replaced the slate under the table and on bringing it out, we saw the match box in its former place. This disappearance did not impress me greatly as I concluded the whole secret of dematerialization consisted in turning the slate over and holding the box in place by a finger, then after showing the surface empty, the slate was again turned over on being replaced under the table, and so the materialization of the box was realized.
“The last test was quite startling. Slade drew his chair close to mine, placed one of his hands on the chair back and the other on the table. My hands were resting on the table top. Suddenly I felt the chair rise, and I was tipped forward, but kept my balance by pushing back with my hands, which, as I have said, were resting on the table top. Then the force was quickly withdrawn and my chair and I came back to the floor with a grand thud. This concluded the second seance. I never saw Slade again.”
Powell explains the levitation thus:
“When Slade drew his chair close to mine he crossed his legs and was thus enabled to bring his foot under the rung of my chair. The leg resting over the knee gave considerable leverage to the limb having a foot under the rung of my chair. Now he exerted the necessary strength by pressing upward with his foot, and holding the chair back with his hand while the other hand steadied the whole, by bearing against the table. Slade took his hand away from the back of my chair for the fraction of a second before he released his foot. I was thus naturally tilted forward and had to exert some force to keep myself from sliding off the chair. This effort kept me from seeing Slade free himself and get his limbs back to their normal position, viz., one hand on the table, and his feet and legs fairly under it. Slade was rather tall and, though somewhat slim, was very muscular. Of course I did not actually see Slade use his foot to do the lifting, but his position and all the circumstances surrounding the effect tend to prove my claim as to what I believe he did. Further, while I was far from being as strong as Slade, I succeeded in duplicating this ‘Levitation’ by the means I have described.”
While searching for material about Slade I heard of an old medium living in Philadelphia by the name of Remigius Weiss, known as Remigius Albus, who had testified before the Seybert Commission regarding Slade’s manipulation of the slates. I went over to Philadelphia to his home and there met the only man who had tangible evidence of Dr. Slade. This he thoroughly explained to me. I asked him why he had never exposed it to the world and he told me that he held back at first because of pity for Slade’s condition and afterwards figured that if the fraud mediums and other potential criminals knew Slade’s methods they might make use of the methods to gain control of poor human beings who wished to get in touch with loved ones who had passed away. He did not hesitate to give me full details and at my request wrote me a letter describing his experience with Slade. I quote it because I believe it to be the best exposé ever written of Slade’s slate writings.
“August 18, 1923.
“My dear Houdini:—
“Please accept, from me, this Lock-book, and the locked double-slate—as a small token of comradeship—in combating Spiritualistic deception, popular superstition and Delusion.
“The book and the slate were my own. I put the lock and hinges on the slate, and prepared the book, and a number of other, different objects—(such as Professor Zollner had, when he, in his foolishness, was pleased to be deceived by Dr. Slade’s Humbug).
“In order to gain the perfect, full confidence of Dr. Slade, and to have him give a seance in my home, and in order to counteract and overcome his explicit aversion as to do writing on or between a sealed slate or a locked book—I showed him letters from (two eminent and confiding Spiritist Authors)—Dr. Heinrich Tiedemann and Tiedemann’s intimate friend Hudson Tuttle, promising to me that they would be present at that seance (at 148 Fairmount Avenue).
“Dr. Slade had handled and inspected that Book and Slate, during a Seance, at my residence (at 148 Fairmount Avenue, Phila., Pa.), where I, together with Mr. Wertheimer (then a student of Jurisprudence)—and in presence of other witnesses (who were concealed and not seen, nor suspected by Dr. Slade, nor his ‘Spirits’) detected the manipulations, pedalations (foot, leg and other bodily movements)—and the general modus operandi of his simple Legerdemain at the seance. I had ready, for that seance, three different suites of Furniture, and thus, I found out that he would, or could, perform only at, or on a certain kind of plain, square or drop-leaf table and ordinary wooden chairs or cane seat chairs.
“Each person present at the Seance, wrote, independent of and before communicating with, the others, a personal, individual report of the Seance and signed it within the next few days. A day or two after, I put these papers in my pocket and also another paper I had prepared, to serve or use as Dr. Slade’s confession to be signed by him. I went to the Girard Hotel, Room 24 (N. W. corner of 9th and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, Pa.), to have Dr. Slade arrested for obtaining money under false pretense,—or to get him to sign his own confession. There, in his room, No. 24, in the Girard Hotel, I had another, a different Seance, with Dr. Slade. He again carefully scrutinized the book and the slate, and then, holding the book under the table, secretly and carefully, attempted to open the lock, with a small key, hidden in his handkerchief.
“Dr. Slade and his pretended ‘Spirits’ could not write in the book. While holding it under the table, he attempted to pull out of the book that thin, wooden, square frame, I had put there at the edges of the leaves so that the small piece of lead pencil could move about.—Then, in a similar attempt, he worked and perspired, on, and over the double slate. His ‘Spirits’ could not write in the locked slate and he could not open it.
“He said, ‘The Spirits seem to be angry at your skepticism, it’s no use to lose more time by trying. My guide don’t want to have anything more to do with you.’
“Then upon Dr. Slade’s request I unlocked the slate, and he wrote in the o
